The present invention relates to a method and device for hay production, and in particular, to a method and device for steam treating hay so as to achieve a consistent, desired moisture level in the hay.
In hay production operations, the producer is faced with numerous obstacles as he attempts to cut, cure, bale and store high quality feed. Weather, other atmospheric conditions and machinery requirements are a few of the major challenges which must be overcome in a successful harvest. Of the various types of hay, alfalfa is especially challenging due to the narrow range of moisture content which must be present in the hay when it is harvested using the bailing method.
In the past, after the hay was cut and sufficiently cured, hay producers were forced to rely upon the natural dew process to get proper moisture conditions for hay baling operations. Such was especially true for alfalfa and some other leafy, legume-type forages. This was typically done by waiting to bale the hay until the evening when falling temperatures cause dew to form on the hay. While considerable time was lost waiting for appropriate dew conditions to develop, crops were also often lost as, within a relatively short period of time, the dew forming on the hay was sufficient to reach an unacceptably high moisture content. The producer was then faced with the choice of waiting until the next day (and hoping that dew would form again) or to continue to bale and risk some spoilage of the hay.
To avoid such a choice, many producers have invested large sums of money in harvesting equipment to have sufficient equipment to harvest the hay within the brief window when moisture conditions are ideal. However, such large expenditures for equipment which remains idle for substantial amounts of time is extremely wasteful and decreases the producers financial productivity. Furthermore, even in the best of operations there is a significant percentage of hay crops which are either lost or heavily devalued due to moisture problems.
These problems are exacerbated in the more arid western United States and other areas of the world where atmospheric conditions prevent dew formations for prolonged periods of time. Baling the hay under completely dry conditions causes a huge loss of the most valuable leafy portion of the forage, the shattering of the stemmed portion, loss of protein and other feed values, extreme difficulty in loading, hauling and feeding and great losses in market value.
In attempts to overcome these concerns, some producers spray the windrows of hay with water. However, such attempts are unsuccessful because the water droplets are not easily absorbed into the dried hay. Additionally, only hay disposed on the outside of the windrow receives moisture. Thus, a natural dew-like condition cannot be achieved using this method.
In a more recent attempt to resolve these concerns, attempts were made to introduce moisture by placing the hay in a steam filled chamber which traveled along the windrows shortly before baling. An example of such attempts are contained in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,254,605, 4,604,857, 4,873,772, and 4,991,342. These attempts recognized that steam is much more easily absorbed by the dry cured plant tissue than are small droplets of waters. By weight, steam has a volume of over 1000 times that of water. When a windrow of cured hay is subjected to steam, the steam instantly condenses onto the cool, dry plant tissue with which it comes into contact. This causes very rapid absorption of the water into the plant tissue.
The prior attempts to use steam, however, have not become widely accepted. By attempting to cover the hay in a container and then emit steam about the hay, these devices and methods resulted in insufficient penetration into the hay in the center of the windrow, and required that the hay be harvested at speeds much slower than currently available harvesting machines are capable of traveling.
Thus, prior to the present invention, there has been no viable method to bale hay with proper moisture levels other than to rely on natural dew formation. Because of this, only 30 to 40 percent of most producers' hay is acceptable as high grade feed, the most lucrative market. The remaining hay either spoils due to high moisture, or is sold for lesser amounts because of low moisture content. As will be discussed in detail below, the present invention enables producers to obtain consistent, high quality harvests without relying on natural dew formation, and without slowing the harvesting process.